Defrag is generally not as destructive as the article claims.
There's full defrag which exhaustively reorganizes everything on the drive from top to bottom so it's all perfectly contiguous and (in theory) all perfectly optimized. Windows only runs full defrag when requested by the user, and even then it's only partial fullness unless the user has also explicitly overridden certain registry defaults.
There's "smart" defrag which only moves data around so that large files are stored unbroken and frequently used system files are logically located near zero for fastest access times. It turns out that large files are usually things (like software archives and movies) which are rarely moved, while system files almost never get changed - so "smart" defrag rarely has any need to move these data around again.
Defrag can be harmful to SSD media if there's the drive is so full and main RAM is so limited that it has to thrash around and break large data tasks down into tiny data tasks which vastly multiply the number of write/rewrite operations (and time) involved.
I'd be more worried about losing SSD data to sudden power surge or sudden power loss than about increased wear reducing longevity. Because it can lose whatever data's in write-cache and it can corrupt all open NV flash blocks in mid-write.
SSDs can die because their controller chips burn out (and there's nothing you can do about that) but their NVRAM storage chips have enough built-in fault redundancy and overcapacity and wear-leveling and S.M.A.R.T. monitor flagposts that the user will receive plenty of advance warning before ultimate failure.
Manufacturers invariably use cheap controllers in cheap SSDs and good controllers in costly SSDs. There's currently some tech rage about certain failure-prone obsolete controller types still being widely deployed in newly minted NVMe units.
Enterprise-grade SSDs typically feature some integrated capacitor or battery units designed to allow the SSD to finish all write operations and empty caches and shutdown gracefully during sudden power loss events. They don't bother with power surge protections because, honestly, anything which gets past the main PSU and motherboard regulation is already going to zorch the whole machine.
Consumer-grade SSDs never feature these protections because of cost (and cost benefit). Not an issue with battery-powered laptops. But a serious consideration with desktops.
All this being said, though ... I agree with the article's assessment about Windows (and Windows Update) being kludgy things. Other operating systems usually use all the problems built into WinOS as baseline examples when setting down their initial design goals.
